I. PATENT SEARCH ENGINES

The fastest way to find patent information is to use one of the patent search engines below:

• EPO (European) Patent search engine for all members (free), also searchable for US and Japanese Patents! (Including China and many other countries worldwide. A top place to start any patent search)
• Patent & Trademark Search Service (at the British Columbia University, Canada)
• Patents & Trademark Search Australia
• Searchable Canadian Patent Database
• Patent Search Services and Patent Image collections on CD's [$]
• and more...

II. PATENTS - ARTICLES AND TUTORIALS

To get a good overview about the patents issue, read some of the following tutorials and articles:

• Patent searching tutorial
• Enforcing a patent ("..Companies who enforce patents in court or in negotiations must tailor a custom strategy for each situation, weighing the cost of enforcement against the likelihood of a good result..." - Article)
• Patent law: an overview (With links to federal materials)
• New Concepts In Obtaining And Enforcing Software Patents
• U.S. Trade Policy and the Japanese Patent System
• A top intellectual property all-round site covering several aspects of intellectual properties and patents
• Patents and the European Internal Market: Background & Recent developments (Part 1-3)
• Requirements for patentability
• Who's really being protected - An Interview With the Patents Office Director and Tim O'Reilly)
• New Kind Codes for US Patents (New patent law went into effect November 29, 2000, the change in kind codes is effective as of January 2001.
• Design Patents ("By protecting the non-functional aspects of the way an article looks, the design patent fills a gap between copyright protection for authors and patent protection for inventors..." - Article)
• Patents - Preparation and Filing of a Utility Patent Application (Article)
• First-To-File Or First-To-Invent? (Detailed)
• Patents Are An Economic Absurdity ("..We show how patents and most particularly software patents, like all other forms of protectionism, are an absurd kind of government intervention whose effects are opposite to its alleged rationale. We show that the net cost of such protectionism exceeds.." - Detailed)
• Ag Biotechnology Patents and New Technologies)
• History of Japanese Industrial Property System (PDF; 76 p.)
• The Big Three: Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights
  (Introduction & Tutorial. PDF; 36 p.)
• and more...

III. COPYRIGHTS INFORMATION AND TUTORIALS

To be informed about all kind of copyrights just start to read the faq's and the copyright guidelines:

• About Internet copyright laws (guidelines)
• A web law FAQ (48k)
• About U.S. copy right law with related links
• The copyright FAQ (Somewhat musician oriented)
• When works passes into public domain (a table about copyright issues)
• Journal of electronic publishing: Who owns what? - Ownership of intellectual property
• Copyright in E-mail (detailed article and advice)
• Copyright Guidelines (aimed for photographers and images)
• 10 Big Myths about copyright explained: An attempt to answer common myths about copyright seen on the net and cover issues related to copyright and USENET/Internet publication. (Also links to the 'A brief intro to copyright' article)
• Copyrights: A choice of no choice for artists and third world countries; the public domain is loosing anyway (PDF; 30 p.)
• Multimedia Law and Business Handbook (Detailed introductions)
• Copyright Law of the United States of America (Detailed as text or pdf)
• and more...

IV. TRADEMARKS CLASSIFICATION AND PROTECTION

You can protect your trademarks to some degree. Here you can find out more about it:

• Protect your trademark or service mark in 3 steps (A free name monitoring service: Input your url and you will provided with a monthly report to show if your brand remains secure)
• All about Trademarks (A large, 90k link page.)
• A real nice trademark classification site
• International Trademark Classes Master-McNeil provides corporate and product naming services to companies worldwide.
• and more...

V. MANAGING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES (IP)

Managing Intellectual Property is the first step to protect your investments. Our links in this section give you some hints on how to do this:

• Delphion Intellectual Property Network to search, view and analyze patent collections worldwide. (Incl. application, granted, references etc. from US, Europe and Japan. Nice tool with detailed results. You may start all your IP search here)
• Copyright Basics (Larger FAQ by the Library of Congress)
• Managing Intellectual Property: From Tactical to Strategic
• What's Fair? - Managing Intellectual Property on the Net
• Intellectual Property Offices (Worldwide)
• Managing Intellectual Property - The Pew Higher Education Roundtable Discussion (case study/sample)
• An Intellectual Property Law Primer For Multimedia And Web Developers (Comprehensive article)
• Avoiding Intellectual Property Problems (Article/Tips)
• Intellectual Property: The Practical and Legal Fundamentals (Article/Tips - Detailed)
• Intellectual Property Digital Library ("..The Intellectual Property Digital Library Web site provides access to various intellectual property data collections currently hosted by the World Intellectual Property Organization. These collections include Hague, JOPAL (non-patent reference), Madrid and PCT data and support fully searchable information retrieval and display by users on demand. Access to the Digital Library is available to the general public free-of-charge...")
• and more...